Across a vast realm harboring countless galaxies lay a galaxy of diverse planets. Once, these planets brimmed with life. Each orbited the sun and embraced the moon at different intervals while basking in the glow of the shimmering, distant stars.
These planets were painted in various shades and bore unique names—though some remained yet to be christened. This realm was a beauty to behold, a sight of pure wonder.
... But not anymore.
Presently, the sun and the moon had collided, shattering one another. Shards of molten fire and massive, dull stones floated in the vast expanse of space, their impact erasing the distinction between day and night. The planets that once basked in rays of sunlight and soft moonlight were now shattered. Destroyed. Broken.
... They were only a step away from non-existence.
A large, rocky planet—insignificant and small compared to its neighbors—floated just beneath the blazing, broken sun. It was split into three segments, each fragment drifting apart in the absence of gravity. Two of those segments had drifted too close to the sun's searing rays and were melting away.
... In mere seconds, Mercury would be gone.
The same fate awaited the other planets facing slow extinction.
From afar, Venus appeared to still be standing, but the view was deceptive. Its once serene, soft golden glow was dimming, choked by its own toxic atmosphere. The dense carbon dioxide and acid rain that had guarded Venus's beauty for millennia were now betraying it; the air seeped through deep cracks, killing the planet from within.
Red rocks of varying sizes, burning with crimson flames, drifted to where Mars had once been.
Amid the drifting red debris, a lone cybernetic man floated. Half flesh and half machine, he smoldered in the void. His metal skin was cracked, glowing from within like molten glass. The armor that once shone with power now sagged and melted. Yet even in ruin, he carried an air of calm defiance. A single blue eye glowed weakly against the red glare, casting a cold light over the dying embers escaping his chest.
He did not scream or struggle. His metallic, wired right hand reached upward, trembling toward the shattered sun as if trying to grasp the light one last time. Circuits faded, the fire consumed him, and in the silence of space, he became still. Even in death, he burned with elegance, like the final breath of a fallen star.
Jupiter was nowhere to be seen, blinked out of existence. Saturn was melting under an unseen heat, its icy, glassy rings broken into countless shards. Neptune had turned into a vast void of darkness, swallowing the surrounding space into itself. Beyond lay other destroyed worlds. The Kuiper Belt, once home to dwarf planets like Pluto, Makemake, Eris, and Haumea, was obliterated, its fragments consumed by the darkness that had taken Neptune.
Farther still, the Oort Cloud lay in shambles, as foreign tendrils rose from beneath to create massive fissures and chasms.
Then there was the planet just beneath the moon. Adorned in deep blue, green, and brown, Earth looked strangely stable compared to the carnage surrounding it. Yet, it was much like Venus—not dying, but already dead. It had perished from within long before the sun and moon collided. Every continent was flattened; some were burning, others were drowned in black water. No life remained. Humans, animals, and plants were all gone.
Earth had been destroyed.
Slowly, every planet in Primoria ceased to be.
Sometime later, in a desert just meters away from what was once the center of the Earth, something unthinkable happened.
The desert stretched toward the horizon with pale, glowing blue surfaces like frozen water. It was composed of polygonal patterns, making the ground seem as if it were made of liquid rather than sand.
In one section of the desert, a tiny spark of shifting colors crawled outward. It started small but slowly expanded into a massive void of swirling hues—a "Rainbow Void" swallowing everything it encountered. Soon, the Great Salt Desert of Iran was completely consumed.
The Rainbow Void did not stop. It swallowed every part of Earth before expanding into outer space. It devoured Earth, Venus, the shards of Mars, and the broken remains of the sun and moon. It pulled everything into its myriad of colors.
Once it had consumed all of existence, the Rainbow Void slowly folded into itself until it became a tiny dot floating in an endless abyss of darkness.
What looked like the end of Primoria was merely the beginning. After a time, a whisper resounded through the abyss:
"Anhuris... Anhuris... Anhuris..."
From the darkness, white tendrils took form. They interconnected until they shaped a gargantuan cat made of white lines and an inner shade of shiny black. The cat purred and stretched, moving through the dark. Deep within its soul, an hourglass slowly turned. Then it spun, its speed increasing every second.
As the hourglass spun, time rewound, yet the cat remained unaffected. The Rainbow Void reversed its actions, transitioning from a maw that swallowed reality to a force that restored it.
Soon, Primoria was returned to its destroyed state, but the hourglass did not stop.
It spun even faster, accelerating the regression. In space, a man could be seen spreading endless darkness over Neptune, and a radiant figure burned Mars—but before that, the figure was locked in a brawl with the cybernetic man, who appeared whole once more.
The reversal moved too fast to grasp every detail.
Space returned to its normal state. The moon mended itself; the sun rose. On Earth, the flattened land rose, cobblestones rearranged, and towers reconstructed through the invisible force of time. The regression revealed the many wars that had plagued the world: the one that destroyed Primoria, high-stakes battles in desolate deserts, strange beings attacking humanity, and internal conflicts among men.
As the hourglass spun, visions rushed through the void like the memories of a dying god.
And then it stopped. The cat, having witnessed the entire reversal, vanished, followed by the faint, echoing whisper: "Anhuris."
Gasping, Elara jolted awake, panting and drenched in sweat. She clutched her neck and looked around, her purple hair disheveled and her purple eyes filled with disbelief.
Darkness surrounded her. A solitary ray of sunlight found its way through a small window, but it wasn't enough to brighten the room. She lay on a makeshift stone bed attached to the wall, flanked by gargantuan chains hanging diagonally. Stones and pieces of wood littered the ground.
She was dressed in a simple brown tunic and was barefoot. She sighed, staring down at her dirty feet.
"I... I actually regressed?"